Investigators looking for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has dismissed debris that was washed up on a remote beach 10km east of Augusta.
In what appeared to be a major development in the seven-week search for the missing Boeing 777, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau examined photographs of the debris sent to them by Western Australian police.
Canberra-based ATSB chief commissioner Martin Dolan said on Wednesday night that “it’s sufficiently interesting for us to take a look at the photographs.”
However, he cautioned at the time: “The closer we look, the less excited we are.”
That caution later morphed into rejection of the items.
The material was handed in to police after being found by a local man at White Point, a remote beach on Western Australia’s south coast only accessible by 4WD.
One piece of debris was about 1.8m long and has rivets and a fibre glass coating.
Other reports suggested one of the objects was rectangular, torn and misshapen.
WA Police released a statement confirming the ATSB was examining the photographs to determine whether further physical analysis was required and if there was any relevance to the search of missing flight MH370.
The ATSB has passed on the photographs to Malaysian authorities and Boeing for analysis.
Search efforts for MH370 which disappeared on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew are being led by the Australian Federal Government’s Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre, based in Perth.
Winthrop Professor of Coastal Oceanography Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi as UWA told CNN that “it was possible” for the debris to be from MH370.
The search for the missing Boeing 777 in the Indian Ocean south-west of WA has become a multinational effort, with more than 10 countries including Australia, Malaysia, China, Japan, Indonesia and the United States contributing search teams, aircraft and ships.
It is expected that over time some debris from MH370 will indeed wash up on the coastline of Western Australia.
